Ouch!

STEVE WATERS ON OUTDOORS

Hooked On Fishing

Catch Of The Day Takes On Painful Implications When A Treble Hook Is Embedded In The Angler's Hand.

September 26, 2003|STEVE WATERS ON OUTDOORS

It was every angler's nightmare, only worse.

Not only did I have the front treble hook of a Storm holographic minnow stuck in my thumb. I also had a wriggling largemouth attached to the rear treble hook of the little swimming plug.

Each time the bass twitched, it drove the hook deeper into my thumb. What made the experience even more painful was that I had actually thought to myself that I'd better use my pliers to remove the hook from the fish's mouth.

Instead, I talked myself out of it and grabbed the lure with the thumb and index finger of my right hand. As I pushed down on the lure to get the rear treble hook out of the fish's mouth, the fish twitched and one of the points of the front treble stuck in the side of my thumb.

I figured I could simply pull out the hook, but the bass twitched again, and the point of the razor-sharp hook went in beyond the barb. Now I was in trouble.

I was fishing by myself from the shore of a pond in the development where my parents live. I held the bass with my left hand to keep it still and used my teeth to bite through the 8-pound monofilament line -- thank goodness I wasn't using braided line -- and free the lure from the spinning outfit.

I then walked to my parents' house and yelled for help.

In 40 years of fishing, I had never hooked myself this badly. Looking back, I was surprisingly calm as I explained the situation to my parents.

My dad got a pair of his pliers and removed the fish from the lure without causing me to wince more than three or four times. After the fish, which was returned alive to the water, was off, my dad used a small pair of wire cutters to cut the metal ring that attached the treble hook to the lure.

Once that was accomplished, my mom took over. First, she poured hydrogen peroxide over my bloody thumb. Then she suggested we go to the nearest emergency room.

I felt a lot better without the bass hanging from my thumb, and I asked her to try snatching the hook out of my thumb.

The snatch method of hook removal uses a piece of fishing line to pull the hook out the way it went in. The first key to the procedure is to place the line on the bend of the hook and keep tension on it so that it runs on the same angle as the shank of the hook.

Once my mom got the angle right, I pushed down on the eye of the hook, which is the second key to the technique's success because it disengage's the hook's barb from the skin somewhat. Then I told her to pull on the line.

"Is it going to hurt?" she asked.

"Don't worry about it," I said. "Just keep that angle and pull on the line."

As it turned out, it didn't hurt a bit. My mom pulled on the line, and the treble hook flew out of my thumb, past my ear and onto the patio. There was a little blood oozing from my thumb, but no more pain, just a dull ache. Mom poured on some more hydrogen peroxide, then applied some antibiotic ointment and an adhesive strip, and I was ready to go fishing again.

Steve Waters can be reached at swaters@sun-sentinel.com or at 954-356-4648.